Page 62 of Claimed By the Deputies

“Yet it’s what we’ve been doing consistently for almost three weeks now. The other deputies are just as burned out,” Mitch sighs. “Upside is we’re gathering useful information. It just takes a while for the full picture to come together.”

“Tassia was right,” I muse aloud. “If you keep your eyes peeled for long enough, the patterns do begin to emerge. Where Jerry goes to eat, where Hamilton spends his Thursday evenings,where Dexter Wright’s kids go after school with his baby mama. They’re all connected in more than one way.”

“Speaking of Tassia, she promised us quiche tonight,” Mitch says.

“Quiche?”

“Yes. She’s been talking about making a classic French quiche for dinner for a few days now.”

“Not that I don’t enjoy her cooking—Lord knows she’s good at that too—but don’t her cravings seem to be swinging all over the globe lately? Last weekend, it was Thai. The weekend before, we went all out Italian.”

“She enjoys cooking,” he says with a shrug. “It brings her joy. I like it, too.”

“She’s something else, isn’t she?” I allow myself a genuine smile.

I’m still trying to figure out the precise moment it struck me, when I knew I had fallen so deep I could no longer fathom my life without Tassia in it. We’re good together, the four of us. It works so well on every damn level, it’s almost scary.

We’re still waiting on the insurance payout to get the repair work going at Timothy’s cabin, but in the meantime, we’ve been making the most of Tassia staying with us. I’ve yet to grow tired of having her around. If anything, I’m always longing to see her again.

“She is everything,” Mitch says. “She’s our beginning, and chances are, she is going to be the end of us.”

“That sounded ominous.”

“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” he replies. “Sometimes, we have to sort of die before we can live again. Call it a metaphor if you will, but that’s what Tassia might be to us. She’s challenging and intense. She has secrets and sins of her own. When we’re together, everything else disappears. When we’re apart, time seems to stand still until we’re together again. She’s changing our perception entirely.”

“I don’t mind it.”

“Neither do I. I just hope nobody ends up with a broken heart. It’s going so well between us.”

“She’s also been instrumental in our work, too. Hold up.” I pause and focus my sights on the stash house again as a silver Lexus pulls up behind Jake’s sedan. “That is way too fancy a car to be on this side of town.”

Mitch takes out his camera to zoom in for a closer look. “Tall driver. He’s getting out.”

Tall, indeed. Athletic build though not the bulky type. Strong enough to put up a decent fight, though. Pale skinned. Tattooed. Fiery red hair and a matching, neatly trimmed beard.

“That’s a custom-tailored suit, if I’m not mistaken.”

“You are not. Fancy car, fancy suit, who is this guy? He’s going into the stash house.” Mitch begins snapping a quick succession of photos, gathering more evidence as we watch the man look right, then left, before going up the shoddy front steps and disappearing inside the house.

“Jerry Spring and Jake Merritt meeting this guy has to be related to their operation,” I mumble, then make note of the Lexus’splates. “I’ll have our guys run the tags through the DMV, see what kind of hit we get.”

Mitch takes his phone out and calls Lucas, placing him on speaker as soon as he picks up. “Hey, Lucas. We’ve got an interesting situation here.”

“Us, too,” Lucas replies.

“Where are you, exactly?” I ask.

“The Emerald Golf Course. Hamilton is having a nice day out with the DA and his third wife.”

I groan with frustration. “And let me guess, no word on when those warrants are getting signed, huh?”

“They haven’t even made it to the judge’s desk yet. Tassia checked,” Lucas replies.

“Well, on our end, we’ve got Jerry Spring meeting with the Silver Stallions VP at a stash house on 34th and Channing,” I reply. “They were just joined by a flashy guy with red hair and beard, custom suit, silver Lexus. We’ve got photos and a plate number. Jake picked Jerry up from that French bistro in an old sedan and we followed them here.”

“Something is definitely going down,” Lucas concludes. “Stay on them. In the meantime, I’m going to head back to the station with Tassia.”

“How come?”

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